Baldwin County commissioners split duties as oil washes ashore

BAY MINETTE, Ala. -- With an environmental catastrophe arriving on the Baldwin County shoreline, county commissioners announced Friday they would divide duties with two remaining here while two travel to try to secure an economic future.

"This will be devastating to our tourism industry," said Commissioner Ed Bishop of the oil washing up on the beaches usually described as "sugar white." Bishop said the oil is another wave in a tide of negative events the county is facing.

"We already know ad valorem taxes will be down next year," Bishop said. "Sales taxes will be down due to the tourism collapse. Budget cuts will follow. This is not a pleasant time for the faint of heart."

Officials announced Friday that Bishop will not be traveling to China to attend an investor conference set for next week in an effort to woo investors for Hybrid Kinetic Motors. The company selected Baldwin County as the site for a $3.4 billion manufacturing plant that could put 5,000 people to work building green cars.

Commission Chairman Charles "Skip" Gruber and Commissioner Wayne Gruenloh are scheduled to fly to China today to support the start-up company, county officials said.

With Bishop and Commissioner Frank Burt remaining in the county, the panel's regular work session will be held as usual Tuesday, beginning at 8:15 a.m. in Bay Minette.

Commissioners said last month that at least three would travel to Beijing from June 6-11 for the "U.S.-China Green Cars" Beijing Conference, sponsored by Hybrid Kinetic Motors Equity Investment Management Co., the parent company for HK Motors. Members of the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance, Bay Minette Mayor Jamie Tillery and state officials will also make the trip.

"Yes we have oil in the Gulf," Gruber said, "and as a result, if we don't do something soon, we will be dead in the water. We will lose the revenue we have. We have to find a replacement industry. All the problems we have are rapidly creating a snowball effect."

Gruber described the scenes of gooey oil on county beaches as "terrible, but I can't change it. If I had a magic wand to make it disappear I certainly would. But in the economic development department, I can attend to that. Georgia is actively recruiting HK Motors. We will work to keep them. The oil on our shores makes this trip all the more critical."

Officials said the oil impact on the county will likely be long-lived, and a hurricane could spread the oil to sensitive wetlands far from the sandy shores. The impact of the oil spill here will likely be felt for many years, officials said.

Gruenloh said he would be meeting with some 200 investors in China, along with vendors who will supply some of the parts for the hybrid car.

"I don't think the importance of this trip could be overstated," Gruenloh said. "In between the oil in the Gulf and the threat of hurricanes to our tourism industry, now more than ever we need to diversify our economy."

Gruenloh said he is as personally devastated as the rest of the county's people about the oil's impact here, and has worked to be sure the county "amassed all the resources we could" to respond.

"There are people here whose livelihood has been all but wiped out," Gruenloh said. "Fishermen, charter boat owners, restaurants, restaurant workers -- this will have a traumatic effect on our people for a long time to come."

Officials here said their patience with BP PLC is all but gone with a claims process that grows more complex with each meeting.

"BP keeps changing who we are supposed to submit our claims to," Burt said. "Each time we meet, and sometimes in the same meeting, they give us a different process or person to submit to. I am very frustrated and very disappointed from BP to our state and federal elected officials. But somehow, we have to keep our heads and look at the facts, look at our resources, evaluate where we are and what we can do."

Burt said he saw language in the most recent BP claim forms take a decidedly "lawyer language" turn that he believes is intended to limit the company's liability. Now, he said, BP is refusing to pay the county's claim for regular hours worked by employees on the oil spill response. The county billed BP for more than $75,000 in regular and overtime hours worked on the response.

Burt said regular hours were worked when employees were diverted from "serving the citizens of the county on routine duties" to oil spill training, meetings and other work. That left other workers to take up the slack, he said, and forced many into overtime.

On a personal level, commissioners said the oil's arrival here was sickening.

"It's hard for the mind to even imagine it," Burt said. "This will change everything we've been about for my lifetime. I don't know how long this will go on; just how we will deal with what comes next. So far, I've been disappointed in everyone we've dealt with."

Gruber said he realized some would be critical of the trip in the midst of the oil crisis and an election year in which Gruber, Gruenloh and Bishop all have opponents.

"It's a bad time to have to leave," Gruber said, "but it's in the best interest of the whole county. If I have to pay at the polls, so be it. Anyone in public office who wouldn't go to secure 5,000 jobs isn't thinking of the people who need those jobs."

In September 2009, HK Motors announced its plans to construct a green-vehicle manufacturing plant in Baldwin County east of Bay Minette. Some industry analysts expressed doubts the plant would ever come to fruition, but the company has signed on with major designers, architects and recently purchased a lithium battery plant in China.